In the Blink of an Eye
by Azdoine
Summary: Sixteen years in Hekapoo's dimension is a long time, but it seems over before Marco even knows it. Everything is over before Marco knows it.


Once upon a time, there was a boy, and he felt as if he was trapped.

Every night, he would look up at the sky (the stars) and wonder if he would always find his feet on the ground he had always known. This was, perhaps, a very strange thing to wonder, when there was already so much distance he could cover on the ground he knew - faces to see and places to know. But that boy was already a very strange boy, so he did not care.

Fortunately for him, that strange boy had strange friends.

Every day when he could, he and Star Butterfly took her dimensional scissors, and used them to cut distance and barriers to nothing. And so, the two of them went everywhere.

On their second day together, the boy tried to cut their way to the moon that he knew, and that was a mistake lined in vacuum and frost. But there were other places to know; they saw knew places together that no one else had been in centuries (if ever), from Leng, Rl'yeh, and Carcosa to Arcadia, Alhambra, and Albion.

Once upon a time, though, all things had to end.

And so, one day, the boy made his way to the Fisher's Kingdom (shearing space one hundred times over in his wake), when his scissors caught on an unseen hedge, and he met the forge-mistress, Hekapoo.

"Where did you get those scissors, boy?" Hekapoo asked with a barren drawl. "I haven't seen those scissors in a long time."

The boy was confused, of course. "I borrowed them from a friend. Why do you ask?"

"I ask because they aren't yours, human," Hekapoo said. "Do you think me a fool? These were stolen from me, and now I know who has taken my tools without earning them."

(the scissors didn't belong to him)

"Star isn't a thief!" the boy proclaimed, defending the one person who really seemed to know him.

(the scissors didn't even belong to Star Butterfly)

(they didn't belong to Pony Head either, who had stolen the scissors from Hekapoo and thoughtlessly gifted them to Star)

The thing that called itself Hekapoo sneered, for she believed that Star Butterfly was the thief, but she also knew she could never take revenge against a member of the Mewni Royal Family.

The little boy would have to do.

"Let me take them back," the boy said. "I was able to borrow them from Star because she trusted me to return them, and I won't let you disappoint her. I won't let you make a liar out of me."

"You're already a liar, boy," Hekapoo said. "You lie to everyone who sees your face and thinks they know you."

The boy knew she had him dead to rights. How did she know?

"I should show them all for what you are, boy," Hekapoo mused, lying through her teeth, still considering the question of what to do.

(it had been such a long time)

(she was _so bored_ )

"But no," Hekapoo said. "If you give me those scissors now, I won't tell the people who trust you who you really are. This I swear upon my true name, boy."

The boy considered this for all of seven seconds before he nodded and passed the dimensional scissors to their creator.

And then he tried to take them back, leaping for her with a kick he had practiced a hundred times. "You never said I had to let you keep the scissors."

Hekapoo smiled the smile of a suspended sword who knew and planned more than anyone knew. "If and only if you can blow out the heart-flame above my head, you can keep the scissors as your own."

"Deal," the boy said, sealing his fate in Hekapoo's gossammer bonds. The chase was on, and Hekapoo fled through a doorway of her own design, and the boy could not return without the scissors.

He would not see them for a long time. On the second day in Hekapoo's world, the boy grew hungry, having chased Hekapoo and her mirages down to the ends of her earth.

(was it Hekapoo's world he traversed, or Hekapoo herself?)

(the ground of Hekapoo's world was a ground he could never know)

He should have starved, but he learned to scavenge and to hunt, as if he had always known how, and he ate from the fruits of alien trees, and from the bodies of alien beasts, staining his lips and teeth and gums and skin with a color like the flame of Hekapoo's hair.

(the stain would not come out no matter how long he drank from the rivers or brushed and scrubbed at his mouth)

(he missed his toothbrush already)

He climbed through the trees and slept in the shade of leaves, taking shelter from the scorching light of Hekapoo's sun, wielding their branches as bludgeons to give Hekapoo pause.

And eventually, the boy learned to forget about the people who surely missed him, questing for the scissors that could take him home. But time passed, as time was wont to do. If Father Time took time off, nobody knew.

Time went by, and the boy grew older, even if Hekapoo did not.

(she would never grow older)

"Come now, boy," Hekapoo whispered to him, through one of the mirages she had cast off so long ago. "You've already forgotten your family, and friends, haven't you? Why not follow me forever, through all of the places and worlds I call my own. You know you will never need to feel trapped if only you learn to take my worlds for your world."

(the boy did not hear the words she spoke but he knew them all the same)

(sometimes he felt dizzy and sick, passing through the portals of Hekapoo's dimensional scissors, but he knew it was in his head)

Sixteen years went by, and finally the boy - now a man - found Hekapoo for what felt like the last time, blowing out the fire over her head with the war-fan he had learned to use in a year and a half of his journey.

"You are more than I thought you would be," Hekapoo said, lying through her teeth. "Take your scissors and go. In fact, you can have your own pair, all your own."

And so the boy went, wearing the face he had once worn like the mask of a liar.

(he wasn't thirty years old, he wasn't a boy anymore)

(had he ever been a boy, or only imagined it?)

(was he even thirty years old?)

Hekapoo chuckled as he left, and sometimes he would hear the crackle and purr of her laughter when he thought he was alone. He was fourteen years old, like he had always been, and he was just as much a liar as he had always been.

("What a relief," the boy said. "I didn't realize time could stretch so much, but it makes sense, with what Father Time does-")

(Star would not give his thoughts consideration, which was strange, because she was always supposed to give his thoughts consideration)

One day, when the boy did not need the new scissors Hekapoo had forged for him, he found them breaking on unseen hedges, too blunted to work anymore. The old dimensional scissors that Star had taken from Pony Head had taken from Hekapoo bore him back to Hekapoo's world, and he entreated her for a new pair.

"You must have really worn these out," Hekapoo cackled. "You know they aren't meant to be abused, of course. You could lose them. And then where would you be?"

"I know," the boy said.

"You say you know, but you don't," Hekapoo chided him. "You're the same liar as ever, Diaz."

"I know," the boy said. And this was the truth.

"Come on," Hekapoo said. "Instead of scraping the earth for food, why not eat some of what I've made, while you wait for your new scissors to be made? Enjoy yourself for once."

"I don't want to impose," the boy said uneasily.

"You should," Hekapoo said with the smile of a descending guillotine. "Aren't you hungry?"

The boy was hungry. He was thin and weak and emaciated as if he hadn't eaten or drank in over sixteen years. He ate and drank ravenously, and then he was dizzy enough to be sick in the runoff water of Hekapoo's forge.

He returned home after the meal, wielding a new pair of dimensional scissors. Hekapoo's soft and insinuating laughter met him every night, when he dreamed, and his eyes were stained the color of Hekapoo's hair.

His family hadn't seen him in weeks.

"I don't understand," the boy said. "The last time I was gone for sixteen years, and I was back home in minutes, but this time I was gone for hours and I should have been back home so much sooner-"

"Never leave again!" His mother admonished him. "I don't care how much you want those scissors, never do this to us! You can't do this to us!"

"I won't," the boy said, dropping his train of thought. "I promise."

But sometimes, when he was home, he would eat his mother's cooking, and all he could think about would be Hekapoo's ambrosia and nectar. Sometimes, he would watch Star go on her adventures with her dimensional scissors, and all he could think about would be the years of his journey.

(Star's dimensional scissors would _never_ break)

He stole Star's scissors in the dead of night on his fifteenth birthday proper, feeling more trapped than ever, and his face wasn't the same face, but it was still a liar's face.

"It's been a long time, boy," Hekapoo said to him. "I was wondering why you were gone for so long. Come on, have some new scissors, why not go exploring while you can? I have a spell that will let you live without breath or heat. You could go to your moon, like you always wanted."

"Please," the boy said. "I have a family. I have friends. If you have that kind of magic, I want you to just… make me forget you. Make me happy with who and where I am. Make me live without needing to lie."

(he didn't remember the names of his family members)

(he'd only ever called them Mom and Dad, but was that really an excuse?)

"Why would you want to stay with them?" Hekapoo asked. "They don't even know you. You've lied so well they don't care about the real you."

"I don't want to be here," the boy begged. "I don't want to want to be here. Stop this. Let me go."

(he didn't remember how he got here)

He puked up his empty stomach in the runoff of Hekapoo's forge, and the thing that called itself Hekapoo rubbed his back comfortingly.

"Alright, you can leave," Hekapoo said to him. She handed him her own personal pair of dimensional scissors, and he ran and ran like he'd never ran before. He stabbed her in the chest as he went, and her laugh - cut off by boiling blood in her lungs - rung in his ears every time he closed his eyes. Every time he blinked.

Even though it felt right, the boy knew that nothing was right at all. Even though Star's hand felt warm in his, the boy felt colder than ever. He could feel the rush of wind every time he crossed a portal, but he was never really going anywhere at all.

(his parents still never called each other by their real names)

(he hadn't gone to school or seen a friend who wasn't Star in over eighteen years)

"I know this isn't real," the boy said to the empty air, and then the air wasn't empty at all. He was older than thirty, older than he even remembered his parents being, and Hekapoo's hand was on his shoulder, her lips whispering soft and sweet words of poison.

He could not see her face, but the boy knew Hekapoo was gleeful. And he was right. It wasn't real, it had never been real. Star's hand in his hand wasn't there, it was Hekapoo's claws in his skin. He had never left Hekapoo, she had never let him go, even when he thought he had gone, even when he thought she had let him go. She had never really let him say goodbye.

"It's been quite the ride," Hekapoo said. "But now I guess it's over, huh? I'm afraid there's nothing more I can say."

"How long have I been here, really?" the boy said. It hurt to even breathe. His lips were chapped, he was missing teeth.

Hekapoo ignored the question.

"Why have you done this to me?"

She leaned him down into what felt like soft pillows, and he could not see clearly where he was. "There are a lot of ways I could answer that question, you know. Perhaps it's because you and Star Butterfly took something from me. So I took something from her, and I took everything from you."

The boy was wearing a suit.

"Perhaps it's just because I was bored," Hekapoo said. "Do you know what it's like, to be able to spin up thousands of bodies of mirage, to be able to think in a thousand directions at once? I needed something to pass the time."

The boy was being laid down in a coffin.

"Or maybe it's just because of this:" Hekapoo said. "Because I could."

She adjusted the boy's tie with the care of a mother or a lover. He wished he could vomit, but he didn't have the strength or the reflex left in him.

"You won't be seeing me for much longer," Hekapoo whispered. "You won't be seeing much of anything, any longer."

"Please," the boy said. "I don't want to die like this."

"If it's any consolation," Hekapoo says. "Star - the real Star, not the mirage I made for you - at least she tried to look for you, even if it was too late. She keeps a picture of you from St. Olga's hung up on the walls of her castle. She attended your funeral, crying over an empty casket. She stood at your headstone for longer than I even remember."

The boy did not remember St. Olga's. He did not remember Star's face. He did not remember anything; all he knew was being trapped so thoroughly he had been smothered before he could ever live.

"Star thinks she's honoring you, but what is honor worth to you, if you're going to be buried like this, Marco Ubaldo Diaz? If she never even knew who took you? I meet her every time she gathers the Magic High Commission, and she thinks I'm her friend."

"I don't want to die," the boy said. He could not cry any longer.

"Who said anything about dying?" Hekapoo giggled. "No, you won't get the relief of dying just yet. You always wanted to see the stars."

His vision cleared enough to see the sky above him, and that wasn't a relief either.

"Goodbye, Marco," Hekapoo said. "This time, for realsies."

Numb to air, he did not breathe. Numb to flesh, he did not warm with life. Numb to skin, he did not feel the white topsoil-powder that covered him and should have choked the life out of him. He did not notice his own passing into a death of old age.

'Natural causes' wasn't quite how Hekapoo had planned to take her final vengance, but she found that perhaps she was satisfied after all. The next day, the picture of Marco in Queen Star's study was found burned to ashes, and Queen Star Butterfly cried enough tears for Marco and her both.

"Don't worry," Hekapoo said to Star. "I'm sure we can find out who did this. I'll help you, if you need it."

And Hekapoo smiled. It was perhaps the first truly happy smile that she had ever smiled for Star to see, but Star did not notice. If Marco would have understood the difference, well… he wasn't around to call her out on it.

Vengeance was sweet.


End file.
